Menu

Tracings…

I am in love with storytelling in podcast-form. Like many others, I binge-listened to Serial. My sister gave me tickets to The Moth for Christmas. Most recently, PRX/Transom’s How Sound has occupied much of my listening time, as I travel to and from work, catch up on laundry on the weekend, or wolf down a late lunch at my desk. How Sound feeds both the tech nerd in me (i.e., curiosity about bi-directional and cardioid microphones; gain, output, how to create at-home sound booths) and the part of me that loves the complexities of exploring and expressing human life in narrative form. But it came as a surprise when a friend said that I’d been interested in audio stories for a long time. Really? Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell if something is a true passion or just a passing phase. …And then I thought back, and I did some googling. And sitting here, re-listening to Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse, in an instant it’s 1994, and I am sitting in the white 1988 Honda Civic with the faded cloth seats (my first major purchase, bought from my father). I am transfixed by both the storytellers and the story, tears streaming down my cheek by the end. Something in that experience went beyond the “driveway moments” referenced during public radio fund drives. Questions and possibilities brought up then–the relationship between the professional and novices; the ethical dilemmas raised within the production and presentation of the story, the subject matter itself and its non/consideration of social, cultural, racial, economic issues, the sticky, gray areas involved in the idea of “voice” and audience. Yeah. I fell in love then, fell hard. Crazy to think it’s been twenty years. But I’m so glad to be rekindling that romance, and finally (finally!) reflecting and writing about it.